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Google+ is my passion: I want to help others to get the most out of it.

Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Google+ Photo Albums

I have tested quite a lot the desktop photos feature of Google+, here are the findings.
Even though one album can house 2000 photos, I've noticed that anything over 1000 is a bit problematic: Errors occur especially when sharing...

Need to find photos and create an album?

Here's how to find your images on Google+:

Google+ Local business pages and adding photos:

Looks like that the Local business pages behave in a different way from G+ Brand pages, at least at the moment. I tried with my local page and got a strange result:
When I clicked on the Dashboard and red "Edit" button, then clicked on the photo section Edit pen icon, then added a photo directly from my computer:It does not have a share button or the place to write anything.Example from my Finnish page

But:

If I share from the Local page's About tab's "Add public photo", it creates me a post immediately, with the location of my business shown too. Example of my Finnish local page

The best way to add photos to a Local page album is to share them first in a normal post:

If I share an image as a normal post, uploading a photo or photos: I can choose the album before sharing and I get the "lightbox" view when clicking open the photo with the caption I wrote on the post (editable) and share button. There is no location of the business displayed.

You cannot create a new album for one photo in this way, so it's best to create a few possible albums beforehand and add photos to those later. If you add several photos at the same time, you are given the possibility to create a new album or to add the images to an existing album.

Upload photos and create an album:

Go to the Photos tab on the left side bar. Click on Upload photos.
Choose the photos you wish to upload, then look top left: "Add album". Now you can name the new album. Wait for all the photos to load. Then click on Done at the bottom left.

If you don't wish to tag anyone in the pics, click Skip.

If you don't wish to share the post, again click skip.
Now your album is private to you only.

If you share the album in this pop-up post, you can define already the privacy degree: Public, Extended circles, Circles or modified share. You can choose communities or just one person, too.

You can share the album later by going to the "Photos" tab, choosing "Albums" from the More menu and clicking open the album. Then you can see the "Share" button top right.

Uploading photos

When you upload photos to a Google+ album: The share box that pops out used to bewilder people.
Now there's an improvement: Instead of "Cancel" the box now offers the possibility to either "Share" or "Skip".

The only problem now is that even though I saved the photos to my "Profile photos" album, they didn't end up there but to https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos ... I had to manually copy them to another album.
- And problem solved: It just took a few minutes for the photos to show up in the correct album, refreshing the browser helps.

- Upload a photo to post, choose the album for it!

No more Photos from posts (PFP) album when you use the "Upload from computer" or "Your Google+ photos" on the new post:
Now you can decide where to place the photo, keeping all the interaction in one place. Before sharing, click on the Add to album and choose one. The image will not appear on Photos from posts anymore.
Works for images shared to Communities, too!

There is a 20 000 album limit and (update NOV 13) 2000 photos per album limit on Google+, same as in Picasa. Some very prolific posters have already met the limit: When you share a photo and don't choose an album for it, the image will reside in "Photos from posts". However, each time you share an individual photo, a new "album" is created and named with the share date.

I have moved thousands of single images to three albums I created for that purpose, so my result is quite low number of albums.
Looks like the Auto Backup does not create single albums any more: I have over 40 000 photos and 1421 albums. I have been uploading thousands of images via the desktop Auto Backup this week.
To avoid meeting the limit, create a separate album for the Public pics you share manually / individually and choose that album before sharing.

You can move the photos around from "Photos from posts" to other albums but the sharing has to be exactly the same in the album you move the photos to as the original pic has.

Sharing several uploaded photos in a post also gives the possibility to choose the album before posting, no duplicate in PFP: "Add to album" shows all your albums in a drop-down.Unfortunately these images show up as "singles", unless you click open the album.

Note: - It's not possible to create a new album from the drop down
- If you don't choose an album, the image is then placed in the Photos From Posts album
- Sharing a photo from an existing album when you are in the Photos tab still creates a duplicate in the PFP album - no drop-down visible

- One could create one or two "extra" albums for these posts, unless just letting the image reside in the PFP album: Screenshots not meant to be saved, for example

- Sharing a photo via the newly created post and choosing "Your Google+ photos" still creates a duplicate:Even if you choose the same album from where you shared the photo, you will get a duplicate image in that album.
See this post and this album as an example: The duplicate is now the last image in the album.

If you wish to keep a Public album tidy and without duplicates:
Moving the original image that was shared and duplicated, to a private album, does not change the visibility of the post or the private album it was moved to.

- Sharing photos in Public and placing them in a private album changes the album settings to Public!

- To be able to see all the album images from the post itself, one must click on the album name: Otherwise each photo (I uploaded 3 for this test) is like in a separate album (or a single shared image) and must be viewed separately... Strange.

See this post for an example: According to this there's only one photo in the album, when actually there are 24 images. Someone reported not seeing the album photos from an iPhone app (fixed!). Another that they get an error message when plussing the images: "Can not be updated.﻿"

Hopefully this will be fixed soon! (Fixed!)

Sharing existing albums

When you go to an album in your Photos tab and click share, you can again choose with whom you share it. Google+ remembers the last share and offers the same in the share box, so always before sharing anything check the box. Here Google+ offered Public share but I clicked on the small x in the green destination icon and deleted it.

At this point you can add more photos to the album, both from your computer or from your Google+ photos and also organize the album.

Next to the "Share box" is a person icon. When you click on that you can browse the sharing possibilities: Click on the one you choose. Or you can just start typing in the share box.

The album visibility order:

You can move albums to the top of the album's list on Google+ by adding a new image to an album. Just changing the album name does nothing. Here is a post with results from my research:

Downloading either edited or original version of an image

If you wish to download all your Google+ photos (Photos from posts included) you can do it like this: (desktop)

Go to Photos
Click open the All photos tab
Place your mouse to the grey area next to the photos, press down the left button and drag / paint the photos you wish to download. They turn blue.

Then click on "More" arrow and choose download.

If you have lots of pics I recommend you download them in batches.

You can also download albums one by one by clicking the album open, then "Select" from next to the Album name and again choose Download from under More.

Now you can choose which version to download from Google+, be it the Auto Enhanced pic or unedited photo:

The profile tab for Photos:

Whenever you share a post on Google+ it creates a new photo album. For one image. Bummer, I know.

You can define in which album you wish the image to reside - if you remember to do it ...
But using third party tools like Hootsuite or Bufferapp, there is no way to define the album.

You can move those single images to a new album, for the images to be visible on the already shared posts the sharing setting of the album must be Public.

Note that all the post images moved to these Public albums become Public!
Even if they were shared in private.

Moving Publicly shared images to an album with Private settings hides the image in the shared post from all who are not allowed to see it.

When moving photos, pay attention to those you wish to keep secret or private... Create a separate Private album for those.

It takes some time to clean up the Profile photos tab but hopefully you'll learn to deposit the photos into the appropriate albums already before hitting the Share. I did. :-)

Your profile's Photos Tab:

All the images under the "Photos" tab on your profile are linked to either posts or albums.
You can hide those you don't want there: click on the drop down arrow on top of the image then click on " hide from highlights".
You can also add images or albums to be shown there: For the Public to see those, the sharing settings must be "Public". You can also choose to show some albums or pics for your circles only.

Just don't delete any photos of your own from the "Photos" tab on your profile: You can also "Un-tag" any other people's pics or albums you don't wish to see here.

In this post below I show you how to hide the "Highlighted" photos from view or add some more:
First look at your photo tab as "Public" (see below) and then start cleaning up what you don't want to display.

If the profile hasn't created albums lately, all you see are the individual "Photos from posts" albums and have to scroll down a long way to see any of the users actual photo albums.
Also the #Stories are shown: For the older ones you need to scroll down a bit.

The Photos tab on your profile is for visitors, there anyone can see your Publicly shared photos.

Who can see what:
You can check by changing the "View profile as" Yourself to Public from the drop down, or even check circle / individual profile's view. Same goes to the information on your Google+ profile.

The colourful Photos logo on the left pop-up pillar is for your eyes only.﻿
Of course you can share albums from there via a link, too.

Then there's a workaround to see the albums view, pointed to me by fellow TC's:

- A new “Move” option makes it easy to move photos between albums. Just pick a few photos in an album by clicking on the blue V circle (or click the new “Select” link to select all of them) and choose where they go.

- Easier photo downloads. Once you’ve selected photos, use the new “Download” option to save them to your computer.
Open an album and you will see a small drop-down arrow. This is right above the photos. Click it and choose download. A zip-file will created and downloaded with all the photos from the album.

- Faster uploading for large sets of photos. Google made a few small changes that make adding photos from your desktop an even smoother process.

Here is a nice post with a .gif showing how to control who sees your albums:

Change a private album to Public or vice versa

Go to your "Photos", click on an album. There you will see under the name how the album has been shared, see the screenshot below: Shared publicly. Click on that and you can change the visibility.
You can change the sharing settings also in Picasa for several albums at once:

You can also make changes to multiple album visibilities at once. On the My Photos page, select Edit Visibility located above your albums.

Share an album via link

Have an album that you want to share with people outside of Google+? Click the More button and select Share album via link.

Keep in mind that people who have the direct link to your album may share the link elsewhere. If you want to prevent re-sharing from happening on Google+, check the Disable reshares box.

You can also share from the album view by clicking the Share button in the top.

If you share the link, then anyone with the link can reshare it, better be careful.

If I want to change the settings, I can share the whole album with anyone: Someone with an email, +mention a person or a Page, choose Circles or Public.

Just click on the share box and choose: Remember to save.

Even if I don't share a post with this album, the people who are allowed to see it, will.

Sharing just one photo in a post as Public even from a private album is possible, then Google+ creates a Public duplicate of the image.

Moving photos from one album to another

Click open the album. To move just one or few images, click on the black V circle on the photo, it turns blue. To move more, click on "Select". This selects ALL the photos in the album: You must unclick the V mark in each photo you don't want to move or copy.

On the top you see the number of selected photos: Here 21 selected or all photos in the album.

The easiest way of deselecting images is to click on the drop down arrow next to the 21 selected:

Then untick the blue V circle, photo by photo: It turns black. You will see the number of selected photos diminish or get smaller.

After you have the selected photos you want with "Select": Click on the grey area above the images and the pop-up box disappears, leaving the selected photos still selected.

Now you can share, copy, move or download those photos, or even delete the selected ones if you want by choosing one function in the blue bar.

Moving or copying the selected photos to a new album or an existing one:

You can type a name in the top or choose one of the existing albums by clicking on the name in the list.

Just save and the move / copying is done. To view the new album among the old ones or make sure the photos have been moved to an existing album, refresh the page.

Photos from posts

You can even move images from your Photos from posts album to a new or existing Public albums without the post or image disappearing. The original post made with the uploaded photo is also moved with all the +1's and comments, it is visible at the bottom of the album:

If you move an image reshared from an album on Google+, the actual post will not show up like it does with an uploaded photo, but when you click open the image inside the album, all the comments are visible and have migrated with the image.

The album where the photo is moved to must have settings for Public visibility if you wish the post to stay public or it will just show the original post but the image will be grey. Same with shares to circles or extended circles, the photo album must have the same or wider settings.

A strange thing happened with an image posted in a Public community:
I shared an image in the Google+ Help community as my page +Gplus Expertise. Then I decided to move the image to a new album from "Photos from posts". However, the image and post is still visible on the Page's profile but it disappeared from the community view!

Only the page can see the post in the community, for the others it's hidden, even though it says on the post that it's shared in the community. I changed the settings of the new album I created to be Public, but it didn't help.

I shared the post from my personal profile to the Help again, but it's only visible to me!

Be very careful when moving photos around!

Photos from posts album and more

Click on Photos, then Albums and take a look at the "Photos from posts" which is the first album.
It says on top that you have around 100 photos in the album.

Here's a trick:

If you click open the album and just scroll, you'll see all the pics.

If you wish to copy the images to another album or download them, click on select and you get these choices displayed in the screenshot below:
The limit however is 1000 images.

If you delete any of the photos, your posts where you shared them will be deleted too!

Reshares of those posts will lose the image and just display a grey pic.

Captions
I've noticed that the captions don't work with "Photos from posts". I do recommend uploading photos to albums first and then sharing from there: That way the pics also retain the +1's and comments when reshared in the future.﻿

Organize your photo album

When you select "Organize", you can:

- Change your album's name, top left.
- Set a cover photo by hovering your mouse over the desired photo and click the "Album cover" bottom left: The album view must be set for larger thumbnails like in the screenshot below.
- Change the Order of your photos based on date taken, name, or reverse chronological order, from the arrow top right.
- Upload more photos to the album.
- Use the two buttons top right to change the size of your photo thumbnails.

When you're finished, click the Done button.
Move or copy photos to another album: Clicking Move lets you move or copy selected photos to one of your other albums or to a new album: This may change the degree of visibility of the photo.

Delete a bunch of photos:
- In Organize view only one-by-one by clicking on the trash can symbol
- In Album view: Click a photo / photos and then choose Delete from the top to delete the selected photos.

Changing the order of Google+ albums is not possible at the moment but there's a workaround: Change a date in a photo and that changes the place of the album in your Photos tab.

Delete an album: If you delete an album you also delete all the photos within, unless you have a copy saved on another album on Google+. If the photo is only in that folder / album and you delete the album, the photo is deleted from Google+ altogether.﻿

Popular Photos from Google+

After you finish an album, on the left you can see "Popular photos" headline:
Click on the images to see them and to browse interesting albums from different photographers on Google+.

I clicked on the first image and can see an album of 200 pics.﻿

I will be updating this tutorial when I know more: If you do tests of your own, please post your findings in the comments!

Remember:Moving images from a shared Public post to a private album makes that album Public!